Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems and methods that are used for cleaning teats of milk producing animals.
In typical milking operations around the world the single largest defect of milk as well as the key detractor of profit continues to be mastitis or inflammation of the mammary gland. Mastitis leads to undesirable milk, illness of the animal, compromised immunity as well as reproductive issues and overall animal discomfort. The effects and treatment of mastitis are an age-old knowledge. However, the prevention of mastitis is a rather recent. Since the father of modern microbiology Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease, the general public has assimilated the knowledge that contamination of soil and microbes lead to infection. A logical inference can be made that soiling of an udder of a milking animal by bedding or feces is the most probable cause of mastitis. Therefore, the hygiene of this area via cleaning and treatment with compatible disinfectants is the best prevention.
Udder hygiene has become the cornerstone of mastitis prevention. In recent times there has been a paradigm shift from dairy farmers milking their own cows to employees performing the milking duties. From this change the issue of worker compliance and procedural drift has arisen. To date, worker compliance products efforts have been centered on video monitoring or cumbersome color or fluorescent marker checks. Video does not provide cow-by-cow analysis due to high costs of implementation and high breakdown rates while colorimetric analysis has the potential for contamination of milk and allergic reaction of skin.
Control systems are available to extract data relative to certain milking operating parameters such as milking time or how long a milker is on a cow teat, how long a cow may stay in a holding area before loading the cow, the time related it takes to load cows into a parlor, etc. Based on this data, a dairy farm may identify certain inefficiencies associated with a milking operation in order to increase the number of cows that may be milked during a milking operation. However, to date, the inventors are not aware of a system or method that enables a dairy farm to electronically extract data relative to teat cleaning procedures to analyze such data so dairy farm operators may improve the efficiency of milking operations or monitor compliance with teat cleaning procedures.